


On Trash Fires

by Sparky_Lurkdragon



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Gen, Meta Essay, Nonfiction, Swearing, purity culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-02 22:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20253625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparky_Lurkdragon/pseuds/Sparky_Lurkdragon
Summary: One morning, while musing on purity culture, darkfic, and Sonic the Hedgehog, I wrote a metaphor about fandoms and fires.





	On Trash Fires

I think it does a body good to be in at least one fandom or splinter of a fandom that to outsiders has a reputation as a trash fire.

And maybe it _is_ a trash fire, but fuck it, the flames are warm and comforting. Come sit around it with us, and we’ll show you its beauty. Yes, some of us have been burned by it before, but we know how to patch ourselves up, and it’s not usually the fire’s fault that happened. 

The fire is a living thing and sometimes it _is_ its fault… but it is a living thing, and we forgive it. And we forgive the fan who dropped oil in it that one time because it was an accident, or because they didn’t know what would happen, or because in their haste to find warmth in this cold world they tossed it on there without warning.

Now there are almost always warnings when someone’s about to drop oil on it. Maybe it would be safer if we didn’t, if we just burned paper and clothes, but _fuck_ it is a cold world and the powers that be are burning the oil and burning the oil and burning the oil - sometimes the fire that is a living thing needs the oil because it is fire and that is what fire _does_, and denying that about it, saying the oil is forbidden, is denying the nature of the fire itself.

Fire is so much more dangerous when it isn’t understood, when its nature is willfully hidden, when it isn’t respected. It is a living thing.

So come. Stand with me around this burning trash can. Wear your safety goggles and let me show you its beauty! Let me show you how to make it burn so hot it shifts blue, let me show you the gouts you can get with cooking oil and motor oil, how high the flames surge! Let me show you this fierce and deadly thing!

Let me show you! Let me show you!

You don’t want to let me show you?!

Well, that’s okay, too.

I mean it, my friend. I mean it.

It’s a trash fire. I know it’s a trash fire. It’s strange and desperate and a little or a lot unsafe if you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s okay to prefer a campfire or central heating. A lot of the time I do, too.

But this is _my _trash fire. It is warm and comforting, and sometimes its comfort _is_ from how it is a strange and desperate thing.

Taking away the trash fires just leaves people cold.


End file.
